He turned to find her in the doorway, white lipped and wide eyed.
“Cami, you’re home!” Knocking over a chair, Bellis flew to wrap her arms around her eldest sister, followed quickly by Daphne. Camellia hugged them and kissed them, running her hands over their heads as she exclaimed at how they’d grown and expressed her hope that they’d been good.
Tangled in her skirts, clinging to her, the girls seemed to drag her already weary frame lower with the weight of their affection. Gabriel stepped forward. “How is your brother?”
Camellia quickly shook her head and darted her gaze at her young sisters, refusing to answer in front of them.
“Daphne, I think your sister could use a cup of tea too. A real one,” he added, lest there be any confusion. “Is there anyone in the kitchen who could—?”
“Cook left,” Bell piped up. “The same day Paris did. Won’t Papa be angry?”
“I can do it myself,” Daphne declared.
“Thank you, dear,” Camellia said. “I’ll send Molly down to help. In the meantime, Lord Ashborough, if I could trouble you for a piece of advice?” She turned, indicating he was to follow her upstairs. “Galen has sustained an injury to his leg. Erica has been doing her best to treat him, but…well, I remembered how neatly you were able to bandage my ankle, and I thought, perhaps…”
He thought of infection, gangrene, or worse. Injuries no one could treat. “Of course,” he said, with more confidence than he felt.
Two flights up, they entered a bedchamber. Erica bent over a young man of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, with red-brown hair a few shades darker than her own and a face nearly as pale as the linen against which it lay. His eyes were closed, but his grimace of pain indicated he was not sleeping.
When Camellia laid her hand on her sister’s shoulder, Erica readily conceded her place to him. “Galen,” he said, and the boy’s eyelids fluttered. “I’m Ashborough. I’m going to have a look at your leg.”
Taking his groan for assent, Gabriel lifted the quilt to find the young man still wearing his boots. “He was in too much pain for me to pull them off, and he wouldn’t let me cut them,” Erica defended herself. Muffling a curse, Gabriel ran one hand along the supple leather and felt what was almost certainly a protrusion of bone, immobilized by the shaft of the boot. Above the cuff, the leg was swollen. Good God. Had the boy’s concern for his tight-fitting, fashionable footwear cost him his leg, or saved it?
“He needs a physician,” Gabriel declared, straightening.
“I know it,” Erica said. “But I didn’t dare fetch one.”
“Why not? The streets are quiet.”
“They are quiet today, your lordship. Was I to leave my brother and sisters here alone and go out and perhaps not—?” With every word, her voice rose.
“Erica.” Camellia spoke firmly, but quietly. “Lord Ashborough understands. I understand. Sir Owen Sydney lives just on the opposite side of the square. I’ll go now, and—”
“And abandon me again?” Erica looked stricken. “Not on your life.”
“I’ll go,” Gabriel said, leaving no room for argument. “While I’m gone, cut up strips of linen for bandages, rummage up something firm and straight to use for a splint, and find whatever you can to dull your brother’s pain. Laudanum, if you’ve got it. Spirits. Anything. He’s going to need it.”
* * * *
Sometime after she had managed to get Daphne and Bell into bed, and hopefully to sleep, Cami found Gabriel in the sitting room, restoring to their proper places the chairs that the girls had apparently turned into some sort of fairy cave or…or fortification. She shuddered at the word. Even inside the house, they were not safe from the rebellion.
When had darkness fallen? Earlier, she had felt nearly overwhelmed by her own exhaustion, but she had denied it so ruthlessly for so long, she knew it was useless to try to sleep now. Sir Owen had left some time ago, his expression grim, but hopeful. They’d eaten, although Cami, who’d lost track of the hour, was at a loss to know what to call the meal the girls had scrounged from the larder and proudly set before them. Erica had dozed over it, propping up her head with her elbow on the table. Afterward, Cami had helped her to bed too.
While she watched from the doorway, Gabriel finished with the chairs, folded Mama’s best damask tablecloth, which the girls must have filched from the linen press while Molly was distracted, and found her father’s decanter of Irish whiskey, still open on his desktop, now half-empty. A good deal of it had been poured down Galen’s throat, to blunt the pain of having his boot removed and the broken leg set. Eventually, he’d fainted, for which small mercy Cami had offered up a whispered prayer of thankfulness. Still, the house seemed to echo with the memory of his screams.
When Gabriel poured a tumbler-full with trembling hands, tossed it back, and poured another, she could guess he still heard them too.
Stepping toward him, she spoke into the dimness. “Does it help?”
He twisted sharply in surprise, then offered her a grim smile. “Not enough.”
In half a dozen steps, she was before him. Wordlessly, she plucked the glass from his fingers, gave its contents a little swirl, and took a searing gulp. “You’re right,” she agreed, returning the glass to the desktop.
“Come,” he said, taking her hand. “Sit.”
She waited, though, until he had settled into a chair, then nestled into his lap and let herself sag against the breadth of his chest. Idly, she straightened the knot of his cravat. Was it really only a week ago that she had weighed whether or not to kiss him? The events of the past few days had woven them together like the warp and weft of the finest Irish linen. Not just physically, either, although the mere memory of their joining made her body thrum with pleasure, despite her exhaustion. He might
